Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #104 - Meet My Mom

Episode Date: March 14, 2014

Mark has a podcast with his mom.

I'm pulling out of the IHOP parking lot. You all know what that means. It's another Drive to Work. So, I have a special episode of Drive to Work, which I'm calling Drive to the Airport. Because my mom is in town. In fact, we were at breakfast at IHOP. All the grandkids had their last breakfast with Grandma. But now I'm driving her to the airport on my way to work. So say hi, Mom. Hi. So I did a podcast with my dad that went over very, very well.

And I realized I had to drive my mom to the airport today on my way to work. So I'm like, wait a minute. Here's the opportunity to have the companion piece to meet my dad. It is meet my mom. It is Meet My Mom. So, Mom, why don't we introduce you a little bit? So, when Dad was on the show, I explained how he was very instrumental in getting me into gaming. But I believe that there's a lot of other aspects of things I do that you are very influential in, although you are not much.

I mean, you're like a social gamer, but you're not a hobby gamer, as we say. Okay, so one of the things that I'm well known for at Wizards is I say that when I got there that R&D was very focused on math, and I brought a shift from math to psychology to R&D. So let's talk about what you do, I mean you're retired now, but what you did for a living. I was a clinical psychologist and a forensic psychologist, which means I saw clients and I testified in court. And I remember when you were writing a play in college, you came to me because you were trying to look for what were defense mechanisms. So in college, I wrote a play called Lego My Ego, in which all the characters in the play were emotions in the character's head, arguing.

And I came to you, I was trying to figure out which ones were emotions and which weren't emotions. And I wanted to use the character rationalization. And you explained to me that it's a defense mechanism and not an emotion. That's correct. But I kept her in. She crashes a meeting and they're like, you're not an emotion, get out of here. Okay, so one of the things that is interesting to me is one of the big things that I've done at Wizards is something that we call the player psychographics, which is trying to explain why the players play. And there's three main, I've done a lot of sort of talking about motivations. And so I'm curious a little bit, what do you remember of my interest in psychology growing up? Well, I think you're always interested in why things happened and how people felt

and how that impacted decisions that people made. And obviously that's a very big part of psychology because psychology is the study of behavior. So certainly one of the things I notice about you as a gamer and as a designer is that you're very interested in what motivates people to play, what they like, what draws them in, what feels rewarding,

what's the element that makes something enjoyable for people. So one of the things I did with Dad is I walked through some of the key things I've had with the game, but from your perspective, to sort of get a sense of a mother's perspective. So what is your earliest memory of me being involved in magic in any way? Well, you were always very creative when you played. You always did very creative things with your toys. And you always were interested in writing. You wrote your first play when you were seven.

And one of the things that was always important to me as a mother is that I think creativity is one of the most special things people can have, and I always worked hard so the school didn't damage that sense of creativity and wanting to look at things. They should always stay creative. So now you guys have to go listen to Harry Chapin's The Flowers Are Red, and you play that in the background. That's a song about this thing we're talking about, of the school systems

tend to beat out creativity, or some schools have a tendency to try to beat creativity out of kids. So I'm curious, a vantage point, the people who have heard the story of me getting involved with magic and playing, getting to know where I work at Wizards, I'm curious what your take on the story is. What do you remember of me getting involved with magic and playing, you know, getting to know my work at Wizards.

I'm curious what your take on the story is. What do you remember of me getting involved with the game? What is your earliest memory? The first thing I remember is that you played creatively and you loved to play and you liked games and you always wanted to play games.

When you were 13 and you were bar mitzvahed, your first grade teacher gave you Dungeons & Dragons, and you loved it. And what I loved about Dungeons & Dragons was that it was so creative, that you could use your mind, you could create characters. And that, to me, was the beginning if you're going off into play where you had a lot to do with what the quality of the play was. Yes.

Well, one thing that I always liked about Dungeon Dragons was I was the DM, the Dungeon Master, and so I would spend all this time coming up with scenarios and things and traps and places and characters, and I enjoyed that as one of the things that I thought was a lot of fun. And the other thing, when I talk about you were always that way, I think it's interesting that

it was your first grade teacher, so she knew you when you were six. Yeah. Who picked out that game for you and knew that you would love it. Okay, that's me getting into games. I feel like you keep avoiding my question. Okay. I want to know keep avoiding my question. Okay. I want to know your memory of when I first got involved in Magic.

Oh, when you first got involved in Magic, you were living out in L.A. Okay. And you said, oh, this neat game came out. You really liked it a lot. You started playing it. And I remember you said to me, they have this magazine, it's called The Duelist. I'd really like to write for it. I want to go meet those people that made this game and I remember you flew to Milwaukee

and your aunt lived there, so you said, could you crash there? And she said yes, but I don't think you ever slept at her house. I think you spent all the time at Gen Con. No, I didn't sleep there. The way it worked was, Aunt Ellen, my mom's twin sister, lived in Milwaukee, so I went and stayed with

her. So what happened was, at the time, I'd been freelancing. I'd been doing the puzzles for The Duelist, and I was trying to get more work. So I decided that if I went to Gen Con, I could meet Catherine Haynes, who was the editor of The Duelist, and other people. And so what happened was I crashed at my aunt's place. And then every morning she would drop me off. And then every evening she'd pick me up. But the last night day, I just did an all-nighter. I didn't go home.

So I did one all-nighter for that Gen Con. And that Gen Con is, for those who care historically, was where the very first world championship happened. That's where Zach Dolan beat Patron Lestray. And as part of me trying to get more work for the duels,

I ended up covering that event. So if you ever see the historic picture of them playing, I'm there like writing on a pad. Okay, so you remember that I went to Gen Con. So what is your first memory

of me saying I wanted to work at Wizard? Do you remember that I went to Gen Con. So what is your first memory of me saying I wanted to work at Wizard? Do you remember that? I remember that you used to go out and do special projects for them. And you thought it was very cool there. You liked the people a lot. And you started doing more and more and more things for them. And finally you called over and said, I got a big decision to make. And the big decision was, do you leave Hollywood and writing

not writing per se but your career screenwriter and do you move to Seattle and that's what you decided to do was to move to Seattle and I remember I came out I flew out to LA

so I could drive with you to Seattle so you didn't have to do it all by yourself. Yep. And we were going to do it in three days, but we wound up doing it in two days because we were so excited to get there. And it's 10 o'clock at night. We're pulling in. We see a sign written, and you said, Mom, do you want to see where I'm going to work? And I said, Mark, it's 10 o'clock. No one's going to be there. And he said, well, do you want to see where I'm going to work? And I said, Mark, it's 10 o'clock. No one's going to be there.

And you said, well, let's go see. And we went to where Wizards, where the building was, and it was open, and we went in, and there were people there. And people would open up their desks, and you'd look in the bottom drawer, and they had sleeping bags. One person had a sleeping bag. That was Gav. But the story I remember is, yeah, it was like 10 o'clock at night and I said, do you want to see work? And I knew R&D would be there. And you seemed

skeptical that they would be there. I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure they're going to be there. Because back in the day, this is not quite true now, the group that was there were all implants, meaning nobody was from Seattle. And so mostly the R&D tended to spend time with R&D in that they would stay late at work. And sometimes we'd play games, but often we'd sometimes do work. But, you know, we were there all hours of the day. hours of the day. Okay, so, what, another question I have to add is, any stories of, I know you have some stories of meeting people and the context by which they find out that I'm your son. Well, I remember one time I moved from one suburb to another suburb in Cleveland. And so I decided to play tennis from the new suburb that I was moving to.

And some women invited me to come and play with them. And after the game, one woman had a little boy, and I started talking to him. And I asked him, what do you like to do? And he said, oh, there was a game you like to play. And I asked him, what kind of game? And he said, oh, it was a trading card game. And as he started describing it, I said, oh, are you talking about magic? And he said, yeah.

I said, well, I know that game very well. And he said, well, how do you know that? I said, well, my son works for Wizards of the Coast. And he knew that my name was Rosewater. And he said to me, are you Mark Rosewater's mother? I said, yes. But the story I like the best about my being mark rosewater's mother is i had a client whose husband had committed suicide and her son uh was having a hard time and so i asked her what did her son like he said oh all he does is he goes out and he buys his cards and he loves his game and that's all he does. And I said, is the name of the game Magic?

And she said, how did you know that? I said, well, my son works, my son helps create that game. So I said, you know, when you go home tonight, tell him that your shrink is Mark Rosewater's mother. And she came back the next week and she said, Whoa, he was so impressed. And then he was having a very hard time in French class. So I called you and I said, Mark, can you get me some magic cards in French? And you said, yeah.

So you sent me the cards and I gave it to his mother. And the deal was that if he got an A that week in French, he'd get a deck of cards, and that year he got an A in French. Yes. Oh, good. Yeah, Dad had some similar stories, just sort of sharing of, because one of the things I say that I talked about

in my podcast with dad is that I know you have a lot of fun when you see people playing magic of letting them know you're my mom. And I said good for you since, hey, you raised me and so you earned all bragging rights available to you. So here's an interesting question. When you meet somebody that doesn't know magic, what do you tell them I do? I tell them that my son is a game designer, that he designs a card game that's the best-selling game in the world, and it's printed in nine languages. Or up to 11 languages.

Oh, or up to 11 languages. I can now say 11 languages. And I describe it as if you took rock, paper, scissors, and you took it to a whole new level, way, way, way, way, way, way, way up there, that different colors have different powers. So like rock can beat paper. Rock doesn't beat paper.

Paper covers rock. Rock can crush the scissors that can cut the paper. But maybe if rock sideboards correctly, it can beat paper. So that's how I describe the game to someone that has no idea. Sure. So, how often, when you talk to somebody, what percentage of the time do people have any idea what you're talking about? Well, they either know it and they know who you are, or they know nothing about the game.

There's no middle ground. If they know the game, they pretty much know that you're involved with it. So here's an interesting perspective you've gotten recently. So I have a sister named Elise. You're daughter, obviously. You know Elise. I do know Elise. So Elise has a son named Josh, your daughter, obviously. You know Elise. I do know Elise. So Elise has a son named Josh, who's my nephew.

And Josh has started getting really into magic. For the last maybe year and a half, he's been playing. He goes to FMM. So you have a chance to actually watch somebody, one of your relatives get into magic, but not from my end, but from the other end of someone who plays. So what has that been like? Well, it's been very neat to watch two things.

How excited he is, how much, the more he gets into it, the more he loves it. And then for him to realize how famous you are in that game. And in fact, he started reading things and he said to me one day, boy, some people say mean things about Uncle Mark. Some people do say mean things about Uncle Mark. That is very true. But I think what he also realized was

that lots of people knew who you were and that he loves talking to you because most people that he knows don't know it to the depth that obviously you know it. So he loves that. But last year, I came to Salt Lake where he lives. And he was playing on a Friday night.

And he doesn't allow his mom and dad to come. They have to drop him off and then pick him up. He can't come in. So he says, but grandma, you can come. So I'm feeling really good. I'm cool. I'm cool, grandma. And when I get to the store, Tashi sees me come in and he rushes over and he grabs me and he takes me over to the people that own the store and I expect he's going to say, this is my grandma and he says, this is Mark Rosewater's mother. You've shown you off. Yep, showing me off.

Yeah, it's funny because Josh has gotten very, like, he is very competitive and he definitely, it's interesting to me because like I said I spend a lot of time and energy from the vantage point of making the game but it's interesting to have someone who I'm very close to watching them play and I find that's always neat to me. Yes.

It's very fun to watch and he just for the first time last year started to build his own deck because the way he got into it was that you gave him his first deck. That was his birthday present. Well, actually, his first deck he got, so my sister did a semester at sea. She's a professor, and so she took her whole family, and you went with them, right? Yeah.

And how many countries did you guys visit? Oh, 10, 11. I mean, you went to almost every continent, right? We went to Africa, we went to Asia. You went to South America. We went to South America. We didn't go to Europe. Did you go to Australia?

No. Okay. But yeah, they were, so you guys were like, I know, in Brazil and in South Africa and India and China. And Vietnam and Cambodia and China and Ghana.

Ghana earlier on. And so, anyway, so the story for this point is that Elise took her son and daughter, Lindsay and Josh, with her. But mostly it was college students because Semester C is a college. It's a semester for college students. And so a couple college students taught Josh how to play Magic. And they gave him his very first deck.

But that was really at the end of the trip. It was really at the end of the trip he started playing, maybe the last two weeks. And then what happened was, then for his birthday, I got him a deck. I made a deck for him. He told me what he wanted, and I had him pick a color. And then he picked green, so I made him a green deck. But anyway, so what else? I mean, here's your chance to be on my podcast.

Is there anything else, a story or something you want to tell that you think demonstrates something about what the early game designer you saw in me as a kid? Well, one of the things about you is that when you think something is important, you hold your ground. Okay. Is there a story for that? I have a story that goes to that. You are... How old were you when the superintendent wrote you the letter? I was in... In that first grade? First grade, yeah.

All right, so you're in first grade. So I'm 6'7". And you... You wrote something about people in the school should be nicer to each other. And I guess the principal and superintendent had come down on the teachers that they weren't getting that across, so the teacher gave it to the principal, and the principal passed it on to the superintendent. But we had to write letters or something, and I wrote about how I thought people should be nicer.

So let's get passed along. You used to call the principal the boss, and you called the superintendent the big boss. And we were out at some school event, I think it was the Apple Festival, and the superintendent was there, and he was a very tall man. And you went and probably came up to his, between his knee and his waist, and you were pulling on his pant leg, and you said, Dr. Falk, Dr. Falk. And so someone who knew who Dr. Falk was and knew that he had sent you a letter said, Oh, Dr. Falk, you remember Mark Rosewater. You sent him a letter.

Oh, let me put it quickly. What happened was we had sent some letters, the teacher sent it in. He had given some speech in which he referenced the letter. And then in the paper, they talked about how he referenced the student's letter. And I thought I was in the paper because I knew it was me. Oh, mommy, I'm in the paper today. Okay, so anyway, sorry, I interrupted. So I go up to him

and he doesn't know who I am and a friend, you know, a mother of someone who I was, one of my friends, says to him,

oh, you remember Mark Rosewater. You sent him a letter and Dr. Fox said to you, nice poem you wrote. And you were really, really, really angry. And when he walked away, because I wrote a letter, not a poem. Right. And I said to you, really, really angry. And when he walked away...

Because I wrote a letter, not a poem. Right. And I said to you, well, you know, Dr. Fox, a very busy man. And you said, not that busy. So you always had that attitude that things were very important for you. You expected people to be aware. And I think these are very important attributes for what you do now. And that when you think something's very important, you go in there and you really fight for it.

And the other thing I love is that you always are online listening to what people say. And I remember you came to Cleveland once and you went to play at a comic book store. Yep. And you never told anybody who you were. You walked in. It was back in the days where people didn't know what I looked like. Yes. They did not know what you looked like, and you never said anything.

And at the end of the night, you introduced yourself to the comic book store owner, and he did know who you were. But what I loved is that you always wanted to know how people felt and you wanted their honest opinion and and I remember the guy that owned the comic book store being very uh pleased that you did that that you really talked to people and I think that's, when you talked about psychology and always being interested in the psychology of things, I think that's something you,

I'm your mother, but I think it's something you do stellar, that you always have a pulse on what the players want and what they like and what you could do that would kind of

set their interest. I said, this shit's in. My mommy's proud of me. One of the things that I find very interesting that, like I said, when Dad was in the podcast, I was talking about how a lot of my love of games came from my dad. But I think a lot of my creativity,

obviously my interest in psychology, came from you. And my love of writing. You're also a writer. my creativity, obviously my interest in psychology came from you. Um, and then my love of writing. I mean, you're, you're also a writer. And so, um, I think there's a lot of other attributes that are part of what I am that, that, um, strongly came from you. Um, you know, and like I said, I definitely got a sense of, um, well, one of the things that's very important in R and D is like kind of learning how to stick up for your ideas. And you did a good job of teaching me how to fight for my ideas. So it is, I think that there's a lot of good stuff.

Well, thank you. I think you're a wonderful kid. I am a proud mother. Yes. And it's actually very interesting because when i started writing novels we role reversed that's what i do in my retirement i've been writing novels and so it's very interesting to go to you and ask you for advice yes so it's kind of come full circle and that's yeah that's a really great thing right well i mean growing up you did a lot of poetry and a lot of articles and

a lot of more non-fiction writing and so I did. Oh, I published two books that were nonfiction. And then as you got more into fiction, then I started getting into narrative. Like, you got to get the narrative, mom. Where's your character article? So, no, that's been fun. And I enjoy working with you on your writing. That's a hoot. Trying to think of anything else. So we're at the airport, but we have a little extra time because what I realized is I owe my – I feel like I owe you guys about a half an hour, so we're not quite there yet. So we're actually sitting in the airport so we can – normally my drive to work takes half an hour, but drive to airport took a little less time, a special edition.

So we have a few more minutes. So is there anything else, any stories that you think that you, when I told you we were going to do this that you wanted to tell, or any sort of enlightening stories of Mark and his childhood? You know, what I loved about you as a child is you were always your own person. And so one of my favorite stories about you is you went to kindergarten, and it was a day that your dad and I were both off, so we happened to be at home, and you didn't come home.

And you look across the street, and you see all the other kids have come home, and you haven't come home, and it's about an hour. So I walked from school to home. All the days. Yes. He walked home, and I had had we had practiced walking to school and the first day he walked to school i drove behind him he didn't know that i did that to make sure that he got there so we started calling parents and then we decided you know we're going to go out and look for you because we're really worried and all of a sudden we see you walking

down the drive so you come in the house and we said, Mark, you know, everybody's been home for a long time. We were very worried about you. Where were you? And you said, well, I was walking home and I saw this leaf and it was so beautiful. I picked it up to look at it. And then I found another leaf and another leaf and another leaf. And that's how you walked home, picking up the leaves and looking at them.

That would describe you, that you were always curious, that you walked your own path, and I love that about you, that if you thought something was right, you didn't care what other people thought, and I think that's a wonderful quality. So that would be a story that I would tell about you. Now I have to think for a minute. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's any interesting stories of... Oh, and you actually were a magician as a child. I did. I did magic.

The whiz kid. And you did magic, and you did it at birthday parties. I did. I wrote an article about that, actually. And it's interesting because you always loved mythology. You were very into mythology. And here's another good story about you. You came home one day from school or i got home from work and you said mom i got my test back we had a mythology test and they asked you about some

character remember what character yes i i've talked about this in my column uh they asked what mars was the god of aries or mars was the god of you gave two answers there was two blanks okay so they like what is zeus the god of name two things what is Zeus the god of? Name two things. What is Mercury the god of? Name two things. So it was, what is Ares the god of? And you had to name two things. And you did. Right, so he was god of war. And for the second thing, I'm like, oh, I know the warriors, the soldiers prayed to him.

Okay, he was also god of the soldiers. And then I got the second part marked wrong. And so I went to talk to the teacher and I said, well, I'm confused. I know the soldiers prayed to him. He was God of the soldiers. I can bring a book into something and she goes, well, that's wrong.

I go, well, what was it supposed to be? And she's like, well, you're supposed to leave it blank. We only learned war. And I lost it. Yes. And I totally agreed with him I mean what a terrible message for a teacher to give a student

you learn more and that's a bad thing you should only know this one fact we didn't learn that fact you can't take credit for that fact we didn't learn it the other thing about Mark that I think really was very much a part of who you were as a child that I would say

the flavor text shows a big of who you were as a child that I would say the flavor text shows a big of it. You were a punster. Yes. And I remember... Or my column titles. You were maybe seven years old or eight years old and I bought you a book of puns for one of your Hanukkah presents and then I really wound up regretting it.

So now you know. My mom admits guilt. I don't know how to tell. Admits, takes credit for my love of puns. And you just love puns. And I remember in high school, there was a special person

that came in to talk to AP English students. Well, no, no. What happened was there was a speaker that came in that talked to the kids in the advanced classes.

Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Let's hear your version speaker that came in that talked to the kids in the advanced classes. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Let's hear your version of the story. Okay, and my version of the story is that he said that the pun was one of the highest levels of creativity. Well, what he actually said, I'll correct you slightly here, is he was talking about things that smart kids do, and he said one of the signs of high intelligence was the use of puns. And I was very excited. And he came and said, hey, use of puns, really intelligent, that's me. But anyway, we are about wrapping up here.

I realized, well, we keep talking until we get to your gate, to get to your thing. So I was trying to think so any final wrap up I'm trying to think of stuff I talked with dad that I didn't ask you about I mean what did you okay here's this question which is how surprised are you

that I ended up a game designer well when you went to do that I thought well he's leaving his writing, his screenwriting skills behind. sense of things, your story arcs, your sense of over looking at the big picture and the long-term picture. And so I think that it's a really perfect match for you. That I wouldn't have said when you were a kid, what were you going to grow up and be? And I wouldn't have said game designer. And I think you always wanted to be a writer. So I think that this is just a great blend of your writing skills and all your creativity and your love of gaming, and it's all in one thing.

And I think that that's kind of when you came here, that was your goal. You said, you know, someday I'd like to be the creative head. Well, I'm not, I'm not in charge, I mean, for a while I was, but I'm not actually in charge

of the creative part of it. But, I do use my writing and I do have, I do take all the skills I've learned and apply them. So anyway,

we are now here. We are now at, at your gate or at your, your door. So thank you very much for joining me on this podcast.

Well, thank you. And, thank you for all you've done. And I hope you guys enjoyed meeting my mom. So as much as I like talking with my mom and talking about magic, I also like, well, I'm driving off the airport, so I'm not sure this ending makes any sense. But as much as I like talking about magic and talking with my mom, I also enjoy making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.